I was 16, in Paris. I wanted to find out what a work of art was all about. I somehow knew that there was something to it that I hadn’t ever experienced myself.

I went to the Musée d’Orsay. I found the Monet Water Lilies and started looking at them, trying to find what it was that made them so famous.

And I found it. I saw it. I felt it. I looked at one of them for about an hour.

To me it feels like you can look into the depths of the water forever; like there’s always more to see; like you can never see it all.

Intellectually, I suppose there’s probably something to it about conscious and subconscious: the water lilies float on the surface, but the depth of a person’s personality lies underneath. But there’s nothing particularly beautiful about that intellectual observation. The beauty of the painting is in an emotional insight that cannot be restated intellectually.